Mirpuri Foundation President, Paulo Mirpuri, attended the Global Exploration Summit in Lisbon. Established in 1904, the Club, based in New York, brings together some of the world’s best minds, with a shared mission to promote further multidisciplinary field research and cross-border cooperation.
The deepest oceans, the longest rivers, the highest peaks and even the moon and outer space itself, have all been mapped by the Club’s intrepid members. The Explorers Club’s Global Exploration Summit was conceived to bring the world’s leading adventurers and pioneers together under one roof to share technological ideas and innovations with a view to helping propel mankind towards its next, as yet unexplored, frontier.
Paulo Mirpuri attended the Summit to mark the 500th anniversary of the first circumnavigation of the earth and the 50th anniversary of the moon landings. Speaking at the event, the Mirpuri Foundation President Paulo said: “My countryman, Fernão de Magalhães, was the first to circumnavigate the world 500 long years ago. All of us in Portugal remain proud of that fact, and so it gives me great pleasure to meet with other adventurers here today to celebrate with the Explorers’ Club, Fernão de Magalhães’s place in history. Ever since I was a small boy, I have believed that exploration is at the very core of humanity.It is thanks to those men who stepped bravely into the unknown in years gone by, that we are all where we are today. Exploration is instinctual to man and is vital to our survival as a species.”
In the beginning of this year the Mirpuri Foundation’s President Paulo Mirpuri was mountaineering in Antarctica under -40º and reached the geographic South Pole, an expedition on behalf of the Mirpuri Foundation to increase public awareness on the threat of global warming to life on Earth, as he did when climbing Mount Everest and when crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a VO70 yatch in 2017.
Also in the Explorers Club’s Global Exploration Summit were Rui Bernardino and José Dias Ferreira, explorers for the Mirpuri Foundation Expeditions to the Caucasus region, to photograph the natural habitat of the Persian Leopard in the Caucasus and the surrounding communities.
The Summit took place in the stunning backdrop of the Champalimaud Centre, the Aula Magna, and the Lisbon Oceanarium. The Explorers Club’s Global Exploration Summit is the first of two such events, with the second planned to take place in 2021.
Other notable members of the approximately 3000 strong club include:
Sir Edmund Hillary – After climbing Everest, Hillary made expeditions to both poles, rowed a boat up the Ganges and flew to Antarctica when he was eighty-eight years old. He is also the club’s honorary chair (despite now being deceased).
Tenzing Norgay – Along with Sir Edmund Hillary, one of the first two people to reach the top of Everest. Even though he was illiterate, and had no idea when he was born, he spent his entire life climbing mountains and later founded a successful adventure company.
Amelia Earhart – She disappeared in the Pacific during her ill-fated bid to make a circumnavigational flight of the globe in 1937.
John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, Sally Ride – The first man to orbit the earth, the first man on the moon, and the first American woman in space.
Thor Heyerdahl – Sailed 4,300 miles (8000km) on a tiny bamboo raft the Kon-Tiki, from Peru to Polynesia, just to prove he could do it.
Charles Lindbergh – Piloted the first non-stop, solo flight across the Atlantic.
Chuck Yeager – First man to break the sound barrier.
More at Mirpuri Foundation Expeditions: Expeditions
